The Racketeer

The handcuffs and leg irons were never removed. After two hours of waiting, we left with three additional prisoners and headed west. For the next six days, we stopped at county jails in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama, picking up prisoners, occasionally dropping one off, sleeping in a different cell each night.
    The county jails were the worst: tiny cramped cells with no heat, air-conditioning, sunlight, or suitable sanitation; food that dogs would ignore; little water; Bubbas for guards; a much higher threat of violence; local inmates who resented the intrusion of “federal prisoners.” I could not believe conditions so deplorable existed in this country, but I was naive. As our journey continued and our moods soured, there was a marked increase in the level of bitching on the bus. This ceased when a veteran inmate explainedthe concept of “diesel therapy.” Complain or make trouble, and the marshals will keep you on the bus for weeks and give you a free tour of dozens of county jails.
    There was no hurry. The marshals can transport prisoners during daylight hours only; thus the distances tend to be short. They had absolutely no interest in our comfort or privacy.
    We eventually made it to a distribution center in Atlanta, a notoriously bad place where I was kept in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day while my paperwork inched across someone’s desk in Washington. After three weeks of this, I was losing my sanity. Nothing to read, no one to chat with, terrible food, bad guards. Eventually, we were re-shackled and loaded onto another bus and driven to the Atlanta airport where we boarded an unmarked cargo plane. Chained to a hard plastic bench and sitting knee to knee, we flew to Miami, though we had no idea where we were headed. One of the marshals kindly informed us. In Miami we picked up a few more, then flew to New Orleans, where we sat in suffocating humidity for an hour as the marshals loaded on even more.
    On the plane, we were allowed to talk, and the chatter was refreshing. Most of us had just endured days of solitary, so we plunged into conversation. This was not the first trip for some of the boys, and they told other stories of being transported in chains, courtesy of the federal government. I began to hear descriptions of prison life.
    At dark, we arrived in Oklahoma City, where we were shuffled onto a bus and taken to another distribution center. The place was not quite as bad as Atlanta, but by then I was thinking about suicide. After five days in solitary confinement, we were re-shackled and taken back to the airport. We flew into Texas, world capital of lethal injection, and I daydreamed of seeing the needle stuck into my arm and floating away. Eight tough guys, all Hispanic, boarded “Con Air” in Dallas, and we flew to Little Rock,then Memphis, then Cincinnati, where my flying days ended. I spent six nights in a tough city jail before a pair of marshals drove me to the prison in Louisville, Kentucky.
    Louisville is five hundred miles from my hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Had I been allowed to self-surrender, my father and I would have made the drive in about eight hours. He would have dropped me off at the front gate and said good-bye.
    Forty-four days, twenty-six of them in solitary, too many stops to remember. There is no logic in this system and no one cares. No one is watching.
    The real tragedy of the federal criminal system is not the absurdities. It is the ruined and wasted lives. Congress demands long, harsh sentences, and for the violent thugs these are appropriate. Hardened criminals are locked away in “U.S. Pens,” fortresses where gangs are rampant and murders are routine. But the majority of federal prisoners are nonviolent, and many are convicted of crimes that involved little, if any, criminal activity.
    For the rest of my life I will be regarded as a criminal, and I refuse to accept this. I will have a life, freed from my past and far away from the tentacles of the federal government.

CHAPTER 11
    R ule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides the only mechanism for the commutation of a prison sentence. Its logic is brilliant and fits my situation perfectly. If an inmate can solve another crime, one that the Feds have an interest in, then the inmate’s sentence can be reduced. Of course, this takes the cooperation of the investigating authorities—FBI, DEA, CIA, ATF, and so on—and of the court from which the inmate was